Forgotten Hero
by a mountain of gideon's scones
Summary: Because, after the war, if the bravest man is forgotten, what is going on? Oneshot


_Went to see the final *sobs* film today._

_Wow. It was immense. Alan Rickman is the greatest actor ever… and to even begin to put his emotional portrayal of Snape into words is impossible._

_I don't own anything._

* * *

I walk through the lines of the dead, my head bowed in respect for the honourable people who have lost their lives fighting in the name of Hogwarts, the name of _me_, Harry Potter. Even one death is too many, but _over fifty_… that is excessive. How can I live with myself, live with the knowledge that all these people decided that I was worthy of giving up their lives for?

I defeated Voldemort. I defeated the greatest Dark wizard of all time, yet happiness is not the emotion I feel. No, it is not happy to see so many of the people I know _dead_. Fred, Remus, Tonks, _Colin_, people I knew and loved – it hurts to have to use the past tense here, to have changed tenses in regards to them in my brain faster than I can in my heart.

As I make my way towards the end of the final line, tears streaming down my face, I realise that this isn't it. The reason no emotion can be fully reached within me is because there is someone missing.

"Professor," I direct this at Professor McGonagall, who looks over at me with a smile on her face that fades slightly as she processes my expression.

"Yes, Potter?"

"Where is Severus Snape?" I ask her quietly, not sure how much she will have remembered from the night, whether perhaps the memory of him fleeing will be stronger in her mind than the memory of my clearing him of everything he has ever been accused of.

She narrows her eyes and looks up and down the rows of faces I have already memorised: Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Lupin, Colin Creevey, Herbert Shortish, Amelie Green, Lauren Andrews… and the rest… but nowhere is the damned bravest man in the entire wizarding world. He is, was, the only man who dared to stand right under Voldemort's very _nose_ (or lack of) and profess loyalty when, in fact, he had been loyal to Dumbledore, to my mother, longer than he had been unfaithful.

"I… I don't know, Potter," she answers finally, her tone dejected slightly. "Why would _you_ want to know, anyway?" the phrasing of her question, the emphasis on 'you' showing she still thinks I hate him. I… I _do_ hate him for stereotyping me as my Father for all these years, for not allowing the memory of my Mother to overcome that, yet how can I hate someone who protected me for all these years, who _lied_ for me, just so that I would have a chance at surviving long enough to save the world? I can't.

"Whilst things may have been… _tense_ between Professor Snape and myself, I value him more now than I ever could possibly have imagined," I choose my words carefully, the vocabulary choice still causing her eyebrows to raise in disbelief. "He was the truest hero of us all, Professor, the only one who realised what he wanted with such an intensity that he would take on the most dangerous job of all and lie to _Voldemort_. After all, Professor, did you _ever_ suspect that he was playing a role?" I ask her, realising that she had spent more time with him than me over the past year, that I cannot answer this.

Her eyes cloud over as she recalls certain past memories from the past nine or so months of a _very_ different Hogwarts. "No, I can't say that I ever did," she finally acknowledges. "I'll have someone go and fetch his body… where did you say it was, again?" something about the fact that she didn't even realise that his body was missing, let alone know where, suggests to me that it must be me who fetches him. After all, I am the one who realised of his state of absence… it's only fitting.

"No, it's quite alright, Professor, I shall go," I say swiftly, ignoring her protests as I begin to race out of the castle. I pass people already beginning to repair the castle, flash a few smiles at expectant bystanders, wonder absently where Ron and Hermione are, all on my way down through the grounds to the Shrieking Shack.

Though it is but a few hours since I was last in this hut, it seems strange to already be pressing the button on the Whomping Willow to allow me in. it seems a lifetime ago that I spent his last moments with him, realising even then that he wasn't what he was made out to be, what I had allowed my mind to twist to think was fact rather than childish hatred. I almost can't accept that I am going to find him dead because… because he is the only person who ought to have survived this battle. He is the person out of us _all_ who fought the hardest, and for the longest, with the most intensity.

I duck as I make my way into the tunnel, wondering just what I will find. Will Death Eaters have been here after us and wondered why Snape was here? Will they have taken his body and, through their actions, have continued the belief that he was evil, that he was the murderer of Dumbledore and deserved to die.

"Lumos," I murmur as I head into the darkening tunnel, the already bright day not making a difference in this earth passage. How ironic, in a sense, that the day previously could be so awful, with so much death, yet the sun has risen today as if nothing was wrong.

I head into the shack and see everything is exactly as it was before: nobody has been in here since I left earlier.

And there is his body.

There is a pool of blood around where his head and neck have fallen forwards, his eyes blank and staring at nothing. His frame seems wracked in pain, yet almost knowing that the death that came would release him from the bonds which had marked him with the Dark Mark, the body that had came to be hated so much by so many people, unknowing of the events that had occurred under the table, so to speak.

I can cry no more tears but part of me doesn't want to cry – I want to yell at him for not telling me _anything_ before, for the way he treated me as if I were my Father I never truly knew. I want to yell at him for helping me without my ever knowing who it was to thank… until it was too late.

I want to yell at him for loving someone who he could never love… but I want to thank him.

"I know you're dead, but since I hated your guts until about three hours ago, this is the first chance I've had to come down and say hi," I don't know where to start as I begin to siphon the blood from his neck off with my wand. A hero is a hero nonetheless, even if it _is_ Snape. If I were to have found Remus or someone in here, I would do the same thing. "You… I want to thank you for basically saving my life about a billion times, when I never realised it. I want to thank you for first year, when you saved me from Quirrell even though you hated me, even though that was to get even with my Dad… anyway. Yeah, thanks," I trail off, not wanting to verbalise how I feel simply because I sound _stupid_ doing it.

The blood wiped off, I see that he looks as crisp as he ever did in all black, the shoulder length black hair cleaned of all the dried blood in it and looking cleaner than it ever did when he was alive. So I conjure up a stretcher and levitate his body onto it carefully, ensuring that no limbs are hanging off as I wrap binds around his body. The memory of when he was knocked out down here four years ago by Hermione hits me as I bind him up, the knowledge that he was saving us when he did what he did fresh in my mind as I see that night with different eyes.

Slowly, I begin to walk out of the tunnel and back to the castle with the body levitating beside me. Now his wound has been covered over by his collar, he, like Dumbledore, looks as if he could be sleeping apart from his eyes. The terror in them is evident in the bright daylight, so I reach over and close them… now he could be sleeping.

On the way back, I pass more people commencing the clean up of Hogwarts, which could be one of the biggest jobs that the world has ever seen. Even using magic would take a long time, yet the manual labour of tidying up the castle to then be repaired magically takes people's minds off the losses. We ought to be rejoicing, but the amount dead in such a short space of time makes happiness feel wrong.

"Here he is, Professor," I say quietly as I approach the ageing woman, her face just about managing to remain neutral as she looks down at the body of the man she hated until… well, I don't know if she knows the full story. I don't know if _anyone_ knows the full story but me and two dead men. "I'm just going to go to your office, if that's ok?" I acknowledge that I must speak to both Snape and Dumbledore soon, but decide that, since it is _her_ office now, I should probably ask to go up.

She nods slowly and motions for me to go up, just as she then turns back around and begins to tend to another wounded person who no longer seems as worried after catching sight of me. If I ever need an ego boost, I can remember this moment!

I make my way up the chipped marble staircase and down the familiar passageways to the office which has been Dumbledore's, McGonagall's, Snape's and now McGonagall's again in the space of less than a year. The gargoyles have no opposition to my entry and simply allow me up to the cheers and applause from all portraits of previous heads of the school.

I turn to Dumbledore and smile before moving my gaze to the man who looks as if he has never had a worry in the world physically. No worry lines seem to be present on his face, the lines which I had come to count every time I saw him in Potions lessons, and he looks more relaxed… more how he should look at this age. Everyone from his generation and mine have had to age prematurely. That's what you get for being in wars.

"Hello, Potter," he says, his usual words yet without the usual air of contempt as he speaks them.

"Hello, Professor," I address him politely, for the first time not wishing bad thoughts, like how I once dreamed that Fred and George would go up behind him and pull his pants down in front of all the teachers and the Ministry… back when I thought he fancied McGonagall.

"Are you here to bug me or do you have a purpose?" he asks curtly, back to the Snape I have always known… but without the air of hatred about him; now, I'm just another annoying pupil, not favoured but not hated.

"I just wanted to say thanks," I tell him honestly, his expression changing to one of surprise as he digests my words. "After all, you sort of saved_ all_ our lives," I continue, stopping because, let's face it, I've never liked him and it has only been since his death that I have realised he was brave and honourable.

He nods deeply. "I think you need no clarification why I did it," he says slowly, averting his eyes from me. "If that's all, Potter, I think I need to acclimatise to being on the wall rather than talking to those on the wall, so if you'll excuse me," and with that, he walks through the side of his painting to head through a selection of empty ones to exit the room. Blunt, but it's how I envisioned the conversation going.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Dumbledore asks me, a tear in his eye.

"You know what, sir," I answer, a smile on my lips. "I think that I am." And, for the first time since we won, I feel a complete emotion:

Happiness.

* * *

_Probably was better in my head._

_Review? Thanks XD_

_Vicky xx_


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